Sijia Chen is a multi-disciplinary visual artist concentrating in public art, large-scale painting, and installation. Coming from a family of traditional Chinese artists and cultural historians, and having studied and now based in the United States, Chen Sijia’s work makes references to traditional Chinese landscape painting and often employs elements of papercut, an art form that has traditionally been used in interior decorating and been practiced in her family for three generations.

During the pandemic, the migrant community, especially the Asian community, has confronted extraordinary challenges on a widespread global basis. This object is a collaboration between the artist and the public, a collective study of migration in the modern era of the COVID-19 pandemic, preserved in the form of papercut painting. The artist invited the migrant community to share photographs and other visual materials related to their personal experiences during the pandemic. These materials are used to create papercut images of this painting, forming a landscape that both emulates and disrupts the aesthetic of traditional Chinese landscape painting.

The object is a continuation and expansion of the artist’s ongoing series ‘Cross the Water and Climb the Mountain’ (ba shan she shui), where she addresses the experience of being a first-generation immigrant and refer to her native Chinese cultural heritage. In the Chinese language, the term ‘cross the water and climb the mountain’ expresses a long and challenging journey. Referencing this historical phrase, this series is about the Here and There, progress and regression, and the balance between individuality and acceptance.